Figure 1.--Here is another Winter 1968 photograph playing in the snow. That's the beginning of a snow man my brother is standing on. Me, I liked the slead. We are wearing our duffle coats that we also wore to school.

We also had Winter clothes. At for some reason it snowed quite a bit in the 1960s. I'm not sure why, Normally there is very little snow in southern England. It probably seems srange to readers today, but we wire shorts during the winter as well. That was ot even common with the other boys in our neighborhood. Lots of family snapshots show us playing in the snow dressed in shorts. We were bunfled up though in warm caps, dufflecoats, kneesocks, and often Wellies. We loved all the snow. Several pictures from the family album from 1968 show that. Here we are playing in the back garden (figure 1). Dad had made two wooden sledges for us and in one picture you can see me being pulled by my brother Michael, while other brothers and friends are gathered round a huge snowball. In another picture Michael is standing on the snowball while I'm looking at the camera. Whenever we were going out in the winter, mum was always saying "wrap up warm" and making us wear things like gloves, scarves or balaclavas. And warm we were, with our duffel coats and wellington boots. We also of course wore vests in winter. You'll notice however that we're also the only ones in the picture who still didn't seem to own any long trousers! In case anyone's worried, no, we didn't care, I didn't even notice until I looked at these pictures years later. The only part of me I remember getting really cold in winter, especially on the way to school, was my toes and that was as true ater on in longs a it was at this time in shorts. Aftr we'd moved house and I had to go to school by bus I remember waiting ages at the bus stop once without a bus turning up. My toes got so cold I went back home and at that time I must have been in long trousers.

Author: Jonathan

Created: 12:47 AM 9/20/2005
Last updated: 12:47 AM 9/20/2005